Encounters with Wild Children
Rebecca Saxe: The Forbidden Experiment
In the seventh year of the French Republic (1799 to the rest of the world), some peasants of Tarn and Aveyron, in southern France, encountered a naked boy scavenging alone in their fields and forests. He did not speak, and seemed not to understand any French. At first he ran away from other humans. More than once he was captured and brought to town; each time, he escaped. Later, the boy became familiar to the mountain farmers. He would appear in their houses during the day to be fed, and then disappear again every night. Some claimed he moved unusually fast, on four limbs. Others claimed he rejected meat, and inferred from this that human beings are not naturally carnivorous. One night in 1800, while he was taking shelter from a storm, the boy was captured for good. His family and past were unknown and became the topics of intense speculation. Had he been abandoned at birth? Had he intentionally escaped from brutal parents? Because he did not understand language, he was initially—but inaccurately—assumed to be deaf. Eventually he was transferred to the care of Abbé Sicard, the head of the Institute for Deaf Mutes in Paris, and to the protection and investigation of the Society of Observers of Man.
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